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MG MGA - Setting up a website

I have set up a few blogs over the past few years and really enjoyed doing them.
I put them together to cover some of our journeys into Europe so that my friends and family could see what I was getting up to on a day by day basis.

Blogs are great for this but they are difficult to review later because of the way they work.
When you go back to look at a blog, the last page you posted is the first one that you find and it is difficult to navigate through them if you wish to start to read them from the beginning.

So I think that it would be better to set up my own website so that, if I decide to post any more "MGA travelogues", I can set them out in the usual way, so they can be read from the beginning and not from the end.

Does anyone on here have any advice or experience of setting up their own website?
(I know that Dominic and Steve have set theirs up years ago)

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

Yes - plenty of experience! I write code for a number of sites / fora.

There are content managers out there to help if you have no coding skills but it is pretty easy to code a simple website.

Do you have a domain name for the site? A hosting company?


Chris at Octarine Services

As always, Barney has some good advice http://www.mgaguru.com/offtopic/index.htm
R A Evans

Colyn

My website design is all very basic. I did an evening course in 1992 learning how to write lines of code and took it from there. I have not progressed much, just stayed with what I know and am comfortable to manage. I currently write all my stuff using Frontpage and upload it to my site using FileZilla. For my Domain name and website hosting I use https://www.123-reg.co.uk/ There are plenty of others.

Think of a domain name that searchers are likely to find. For me I used words that included British, Car, Classic, Jacks etc, any one of which would likely generate Google hits.

Remember it's going to cost you for the domain name and the hosting so consider incorporating adverts. I bit the bullet and installed Google Adsense into each page. It generates enough income to cover my hosting costs. Suffixes are many these days. You are not just limited to .com, .co.uk. There may even be .specs or .mg by now.

How about us all devising domain names for you? Starter for 10: www.Spare_Car_Parts_Smuggler.UK

Steve
Steve Gyles

The MGCC Victoria - MGA Register uses wix.com for its website
https://www.wix.com/
It is easy (you don't need to know coding) to use and intuitive with a good Help menu, has heaps of features. I read somewhere it is the biggest website builder in the world (don't quote me!). It costs us a bout $US100 a year but I think there is a free version. We have had (3) webmasters since we have had the site (6 years) and the transitions have been seamless. Check it out
https://www.mga.mgcc.info/
make sure you look at the Gallery page!
https://www.mga.mgcc.info/about1-c13iy

Cheers
Mike

Mike Ellsmore

Mike

I probably mislead. Although I learned coding I do not routinely use it. All my web writing is much the same as making up a PowerPoint slide for example. I just find the coding knowledge useful for when there are patches to be inserted, such as Google Adsense, page counters etc. Sometimes when there are glitches I find a quick nose at the coding highlights the problem very quickly. Very useful for inserting the key words for searches. Also when I make up a new page I find it easier to use an existing page that has the parameters set up, then save as the new required page, alter the content, then go into coding to change the tab title. Just the little things for me that make a knowledge of coding quite useful.

Steve
Steve Gyles

You are wasting your time putting keywords into meta data these days - Google search ignores them - the only way to get search hits is to make the content relevant and good quality.

You can get a boost from getting links from other well known sites, like this one, by pasting your URL into your signature.
Chris at Octarine Services

Thanks everyone and particularly Steve for his domain name suggestion! :^)

I was thinking more of bootfullabits@mga.com

I have used Wordpress for constructing a couple of free blogs in the past and they have turned out ok, I was quite pleased with the last one.
I recall that there were quite a few hidden costs in their so-called free website offers though and although I did begin the process of building a website using them, the costs put me off.

Wix is one that I have looked at too but I couldn't seem to be able to work out the real annual cost of using them. I will have another look at them.

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

mga.com is not available as a domain name

You could have mga.me.uk
Chris at Octarine Services

Chris

I put the meta tags in about 23 years ago in my MGA site and have just left them there. They even got transferred across to my car jacks site about 7 years ago when I did a lot of copy and pasting of files. Google finds my site very well. Type in any car jack name and my site is usually top. I usually get 20+ emails a day so must be doing something right.

Steve
Steve Gyles

My domain name suggestion was just a tongue-in-cheek one Chris, I haven't really got around to narrowing down a name yet but I suppose I would like MGA to be in it if possible.

I will have to have a good look at this part of the process because once you have bought the domain name, you are kind of stuck with it and I would hate to get it wrong.

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

My own sites are now technically massively out of date, but I am at a loss when it comes to getting to grips with a new tool that is easy to use and available on Mac

clancy.ch was built with iWeb, morrisgarages.ch was a contracted Wordpress job that I cannot update myself

What tools are suggested that do not involve wads of cash every month - I have the hosting and domains already
Dominic Clancy

Colyn - much like Dominic, my site is way out of date - started it in 2005 and just keep cutting and pasting new pages over the year.

I did do a modern site for the sale of our house back in 2015 using a website builder called Squarespace. It was far easier than the hacking I have to do with the old mga-mk2 site, and the results look much better.

My understanding is that squarespace and Wix are the two leading site builders. A good comparison can be found here:
https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/wix-vs-squarespace

Looking forward to your creation!

- Ken
KR Doris

This thread was discussed between 18/11/2019 and 26/11/2019

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